


in the violet hour

by morino



Series: [ collection ] – cocktail [2]
Category: springwave
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-10-13 17:14:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10518219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morino/pseuds/morino
Summary: you would kiss her if she were around, for any reason you could find. but she's not, and you're glad and upset and craving all at once.[ miscellaneous verses; chul/mami ]





	

You're a pitiful sight, the two of you, wallowing in liquor and heartache.

You bite down on your bottom lip as you try not to ruminate over a love that was never more than one-sided and the realization that your reality had been painted with false shades. But all you can see now is their faces, apologetic but content. Their hands rested just before his knee, fingers locked. Their joint confession, their last words; _we're sorry_.

So you drink. You drink to replace the blood that should be leaking out of you with something else, and reminisce in an effort to forget.

When Mami's hooks her arm around yours, you notice she's wearing black nail polish and decide to mention it. "It's my favorite. I never wore anything else once," she explains as you walk and leave the bar behind, clinging to your arm to keep herself steady. You laugh, tell her you never knew what color your ex had on her nails – not when you got together, not earlier tonight when you broke up, not now – and Mami grins, loopy but earnest.

"See? Maybe you weren't so in love, after all."

You nod and swallow down the self-pity that balls in your throat, leave it to settle in your stomach and rot there until morning.

Her apartment is nowhere near your own, and so you take a taxi back to yours after dropping her off and exchanging numbers. You don't mind the detour, and text her good night when you get home.

When you wake up the next morning, head pounding and heart still sore, you find (2) new messages waiting for you:

 

> glad you got home safe!
> 
> hope your morning starts off better than mine, i don't have any soup :/

 

You fiddle with a reply, typing and backspacing until you ultimately decide it doesn't matter, really. A bad joke and an offer for breakfast should suffice, and it does.

 

-

 

You aren't quite sure when you went from being the ex of her ex-boyfriend's new partner to the person she drags to karaoke at eight in the evening because family's a pain and all of her other friends have sex they're having or a house of noblemen to watch getting slaughtered.

That same bewilderment extends to the moment she calls you, at ten this time, and it isn't her voice on the line. She's fallen asleep at a bar in town and your number's the first four lined up in her call history, the bartender explains, so it makes sense to assume she'd trust you to take her home.

You are confused when she rests her head on your lap and watches your favorite movies with you. You are confused when you invite her over to watch a football game that happens to be on and she calls for high fives when either team scores a goal. You are confused when she invites you over to watch a short dance routine she's spent the day working on and asks for your opinion on it.

It takes you a while, almost half a year to realize, and even then you only see it because you ask and she's there to give you an answer.

"You're an idiot, oh my god," she's laughing, cheeks red and hair spilling out from where she'd tucked it behind her ear. They're friends, she says, draping her legs over his thighs and ignoring the movie they're watching to tell him, "we're doing this because we're friends."

You accept it as truth, even though it doesn't feel quite right.

 

-

 

She finds her first boyfriend post-breakup in spring, and everything about him screams perfect match.

He likes karaoke and summer blockbusters. He knows how to dance. He knows how to cook more than just noodles and taught his little sister how to rap, but also swim. He wears sneakers and hoodies with numbers on the back. His hair is long and often neatly tied in a low ponytail, and when it isn't his hair is wavy and wild in a way that looks like it took hours to achieve.

(The first time you see him, mane freed probably just to spite you, you're almost positive he wakes up looking the way he does and the thought makes you angry and envious and a little red in the face when the thought of seeing his hair splayed out on the pillows on your bed briefly crosses your mind.)

They've been dating for a month when she tells you that she could love him.

"I want to try."

You hold her to your side and rub your hand up and down her arm, telling her how happy you are, even as she shakes slightly in your arms at the idea of being hurt again.

She sleeps in your bed that night and you sleep on the living room floor. It takes a while before sleep finds you, and you pass the time staring at the ceiling and wondering why you're hurting at all.

 

-

 

They last a total of three months before breaking up.

"The sex was no good," she tells you when you ask why, and you almost spit out the spoonful of food in your mouth.

You remember a conversation you wish you could bury, when she'd called at something past ten one night with her voice sounding not the way it should, asking for a distraction. You spent fifteen minutes telling her about the time a friend in high school got his pet fish and the two he purchased after it killed.

When you were done she was still quiet, but you had to ask.

"Did he not—was it that bad?" Because you knew what state her apartment was in. You helped her cook dinner and pick out the roses. You knew about the one piece hidden under her clothes; she'd texted you a picture of it and several other potential options that morning, and it wasn't hard to imagine what she'd look like in or out of any of them.

She sighed, mumbled a _we didn't even start_ , then promised to call you later, hanging up before you got a chance to say _I'm sorry, okay, or do you want me to come over?_

You wonder if it was a fight with him or pent up frustration that left her sounding so half-hearted that night. Maybe both.

 

-

 

(You wonder if it was the memory of you and the words that kept pouring from your fingertips that same morning. The ping pong match of compliments and the flirty off-hands and the hazy state of faint arousal you had both started to dip into before she made up an excuse to end the conversation.)

 

-

 

You get a girlfriend. Sort of.

One of the guys at the office decides to set you up on a blind date with a friend of theirs, just to get her off his back. All he tells you is that she's from a respectable family, like that matters, and wears skirts that cover just enough, and only just.

You do not salivate when you hear about her. You do not salivate when you first see her. She walks between the tables in the restaurant with a sultry sort of elegance, dress hugging her every curve as she makes her way to you, and you find yourself wondering what you're doing here.

But she runs her foot up and down the inside of your leg for most of the evening, finds reasons to hold your hand even when there's food on the table, tells you that you're so, so smart and so, so handsome, and that makes it easier to trick yourself into believing this isn't the worst idea ever.

Over the course of the evening you learn that her hobbies included reading, playing tabletop games – doing a lot on top of tables, in fact – and catching popcorn in her mouth.

You're barely two weeks in when you put down your boot three spaces short of the ten you rolled on the dice one night, and find it in yourself to tell her that you don't want to do this anymore.

 

-

 

You tell Mami about her a week after it's all done with, because you feel like you should. She's laughing over the movie you're supposed to be watching by the time you've told her everything, even though she suddenly feels a little more stiff beside you than usual.

Then a jump scare happens, a loud booming noise played over nothing more than a bird suddenly flying into frame, and she's back to leaning into you and hiding her face against your neck. She doesn't move much after that, only lifting her head to try and watch more of the movie before hiding again when another cheap scare gets to her.

It feels as close to normal as you figure you're going to get, so you keep an arm around her and try not to question it.

 

-

 

One evening, laptop in front of you as you sit in bed and watch a bad movie the same guy at work has recommended to you, you realize that there's a lot you like about Mami.

You like the way she walks – with a little pep in her step when she's especially happy. You like the way she talks – when she gets in your face and teasingly coos in a voice that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up; when she openly admires something you've done with a smile you hope she's reserved just for you; when she rests her head on your shoulder and talks about nothing and everything until you both fall asleep.

You like the way she imagines – when she's in front of a wall of mirrors and accompanying a song with a story you watch her tell with every step and motion her body makes; when she's bouncing left and right with a microphone in her hand, singing some boy group's greatest hits and looking at you like you're her biggest fan in a crowd of biggest fans.

You like the shape of her lips and the way she styles her hair, and the puffy oversized jackets she wears even though some of them are yours, and the way she laughs at your good jokes and rolls her eyes but still laughs when they're particularly bad.

It all makes you wonder what it would be like to taste her favorite tea off her tongue. You wonder how her hair would feel sliding through your fingers as she panted against your skin. You wonder what she'd look like in a t-shirt of yours and nothing else. You wonder what sounds you'd get to hear her make whenever you hit her in just the right places.

Weeks go by and you go from noticing there are things you like about her to realizing that maybe you just you _like her_.

 

-

 

You, of course, don't tell her.

The holidays come around and they're spent with family. You know you won't be seeing her for a while, but she calls you on the morning of the twenty-fifth and asks you to look for something for her before you have to go out for the day.

_I think I left a necklace of mine at your place? It might be in one of your drawers. Yeah, around your desk._

When you get to the second drawer on the left, you open it and find a rectangular box, with a pretty blue ribbon tied around it.

_Found it yet?_

You hum as you untie it, and are surprised to find a moderate sum of money tucked inside.

_I didn't have time to get you anything proper before I left, so I thought… I know it's not very festive, but..._

You would kiss her if she were around, for any reason you could find. Probably this, since it's the most readily available. But she's not, and you're glad and upset and craving all at once.

You laugh as she sings you a carol, hasty and sped up because she should have been at the dinner table five minutes ago, and thank her before you say your goodbyes. You save the money, wait until she gets back from her parents' place on the twenty-ninth, and use it to get you both something for dinner when you invite her over the next evening.

 

-

 

You wonder what it is about the festive season that makes you think about her sucking you off. It might be all the red lipstick she's wearing since December started. Then again, lately you're just as vulnerable to these thoughts when there's nothing on her lips at all, but at least now you have an excuse for it.

It was inevitable, considering all the hints she had been dropping about it since getting back, but you still try and put on a show of resistance when she decides to drag you to a New Year's Eve party a friend of hers in throwing, mostly because she tries to make a little game out of convincing you to go when you do.

She doesn't seek you out for most of the night, and you don't miss her company too much; she's busy with friends and you're busy with people who have the potential to become friends. You get lost in it after a while and only realize she's there when you pass by one another and have a small chat before you're both on your way to somewhere else again.

When midnight is practically around the corner, you stay in as everyone floods outside to see the fireworks. You find her sitting on the couch when you exit the kitchen with your third beer, watching the festivities elsewhere on television. She turns to you and smiles when you sit down next to her.

"You're not giving Min your New Year's kiss?"

Min? You don't remember who—

"Oh." And then you do. Blonde hair, arrogant smirk and hooded eyes, blue shirt untucked with some of the buttons undone. Tongue ring. "Uh, no." You duck your head, half-embarrassed when you realize this means she saw him talking to you, and you're desperately hoping she didn't see too much or overhear any of that conversation. "You?"

When you look up again, she's smirking.

"He isn't really my type."

"Not him, I—" She knows what you mean, her smirk melting into a smile as if to prove it. "You know what I mean."

She lets you off the hook and shakes her head no, and you sit on the couch together in silence, you staring at her as she stares at the screen. Eventually she chooses to acknowledge the gaze locked on her. She notices where your eyes are lingering before you have the chance to snap them away from her mouth, and nonchalantly asks if there's something on her face.

It's then that you notice the glitter on her other cheek. A tiny little blob that, if you squint, is kind of shaped like a clover.

"Does that come off?"

She moves her hand around her face, laughing when she feels her fingers brush over the glitter.

"What, this? Or my lipstick?"

You blink. Distantly, you hear that they've started counting down. You're not sure you care too much about that part of the tradition right now. For a moment, you're stumbling over the words you're trying to say and getting none of them out because you're not exactly sure what you're trying to get out. So you kiss her instead.

Everyone outside is well into screaming about the arrival of the new year by the time you pull away, and in the back of your mind, you wonder how so many people manage to wait until exactly twelve to do this, or how you waited far longer than that.

Her eyes are closed, both hands clutching the front of your shirt. Her lips are the closest they've ever been, parted like she's still trying to say something. Your ears pick up on the sounds of the people outside and all of the fireworks and somehow, even with all that, you can her breathing, too.

"Could you…" she murmurs after a few beats, fingers tugging at the fabric of his shirt. "Again?"

Smiling, you lean in, stopping just short of her lips. They're still as tempting as they are red.

"Again."


End file.
